sky freesat

[johnycarper]

   Can anyone advise as a fix for our sky freesat on the radio side,we can pick up radio 1,2,3,4 and 5 live and all the BBC type ones.We have suddenly found that we cannot get stations like heart,classic gold etc it comes up with the warning that no satellite signal is being received,we used to get all the stations on freesat radio.

Many thanks.

[Bob T]

Do you mean Sky (a company) or Freesat (another company)?

[johnycarper]

yes its the sky free to air card in the box.

[cooperlola]

Unplug your box from the mains.  Wait ten minutes.  Try again.

Sometimes my box has little fits about certain stations and that works!

I'll see what mine's doing at the mo' and get back to you if it seems to be a general problem though.

[johnycarper]

   Thanks i will go and try that now as it was my first thought but i just wanted to see if there was anything more technical to do.

[cooperlola]

Jazz FM has been working and I've just found Heart so it doesn't seem to be a satelite problem as we're quite close geographically.

[Martin963]

The stations you mention are all broadcast from Eurobird 1,  a satellite very close to  - but not co-located with - the Astra 2 fleet.

Generally a dish set up on Astra 2 will pick up Eurobird fine,   but as the latter is very slightly further east than Astra it sometimes suffers first in adverse conditions if the dish has been set up primarily for the BBC etc on Astra.    I've occasionally had to fine tune dishes for people whose tastes require Eurobird when they find they can't get the channels they want.

In addition,   we often bang on here about skew of the LNB, which needs to be fine tuned in some cases for the BBC and ITV on Astra 2D.   This fine tuning is nearly always at the expense of Eurobird (which whatever the operators say has a slightly different skew to 2D,   more in line with 2A and 2B).

So unless the problem goes away you will probably need to tweek the dish slightly so that it favours Eurobird a bit more,  and/or tweek the skew (twist) of the LNB similarly.

If you attempt it yourself then try and borrow a non-Sky box to monitor the signal quality as Murdoch's rubbish is the worst equipment on which to attempt this sort of thing,   particularly as you need to watch the signal on a specific Eurobird frequency.

Come back if you need further info and we'll try and help.

[johnycarper]

Thanks Martin,

Its on the tv in our gite and as no one has complained its only the wife that like heart etc when she is decorating i will leave it i think,our house tv is fine and we pick up all the channels OK.

Thanks to everyone for their help,

john

[Martin963]

No problems - I think you have the answer there, ie no one has actually noticed hitherto.

[Jay]

[quote user="Bob T"]Do you mean Sky (a company) or Freesat (another company)?

[/quote]

Really helpful post there Bob

[Jay]

[quote user="Martin963"]The stations you mention are all broadcast from Eurobird 1

[/quote]

Now I never knew that, you live and learn!

[Martin963]

In a nutshell the transmission costs on Eurobird are a little lower than on Astra;   (it's a long story over how the two organisations (Eutelsat and Astra) quarelled over the rights to use 28 deg E which was to be the new home for digital broadcasts to Britain).   So whilst the big broadcasters with money use (in the main) Astra (and it's also that Astra were there first operationally) some of the stations with less money favour Eurobird.

That's probably an over simplification but it's worth checking

http://www.lyngsat.com/europe.html

if you're down certain channels,   as sometimes a pattern can be established (eg all the 2D's fail in rain,  or (as in this case) most of the Eurobird stuff isn't there).

Fascinating (if geeky) subject.

[Jay]

Interesting. That explains why we are missing a few of the radio stations. I set my dish up with a meter 8 years ago, time to give it a little tweek eastwards I think.

[Martin963]

If you've exaggerated  the skew a bit to favour Astra 2D then a very slight twist back towards the "natural" position (ie a smidge clockwise as viewed from in front of the dish) might be enough to pull Eurobird back in.   The last time I had to bring it back for someone in fact the tilt (ie elevation) of the dish had slipped downwards a smidge and the azimuth was fine;  so much for the theoretical physics.

But certainly in most cases one can get the whole ambit of channels;   it should also be said that one or more of the beams on Eurobird is centred on the Benelux,  so like Astra 2D the further south you go the quicker the signal rolls off.   

It's all a matter of compromise to position the dish and get the skew set to allow all the channels in,   and of course having a big enough dish in the first place.

http://www.eutelsat.com/satellites/285e_popd.html